Reacting with Anger

I obviously cannot pretend that my insights be universal knowledge, but perhaps someone reading this is in a similar vibration to mine, and can benefit from hearing this story.

What is an emotion?

Emotions are notoriously hard to describe, and like so many parts of the modern human experience, I believe that this confusion arises from looking at things from a very narrow point of view.

The human experience is rooted in perception.Changes to the external (of which we are one) and internal (which in it’s turn is also a shell…) environments are all registered, not just by the brain, but by individual cells, elements, and even by aetheric means of interconnectedness (I have heard this called the Akashic Record by some people).

Each level of perception has it’s own consciousness, but when we identify with any one of these levels (the most common of which is the human mind), we create the idea of self. Rather than just perceive, we have associated with a point of view from which reaction becomes possible. Otherness and self-preservation arises, and from this is born the basic attraction – neutrality – repulsion complex…

From desire arises emotional response – happy hormones flood the cells of the body in response to the completion of a mutual goal, as an incentive to work together as a group, fear allows us to react to situations which could mean the end of the game, and sadness and frustration arise to guide us to the goals which are most important to us as a whole…

A simple change of point of view has the capacity to completely change one’s emotional response.

The function of the self

While it is possible to perceive existence without the self, reacting to the environment is notoriously awkward and even approaching impossible without this interface.

Every gesture, every word spoken is the result of conditioning – that is to say, we choose, based on what we have experienced or are experiencing, the best course of action to get what we want in any given moment. Without functions such as speech, memory, facial expressions, desire or object interaction, there is no reason or capacity to do anything but drift through the aether anchored to a useless yet essential body…

Even the wild fulfilment of basic bodily needs creates the simplest of self-perception in any level of consciousness (in my opinion). A single cell has a function, and can be predicted to act in certain ways to fulfil it’s primal desires.

The awareness that one is alive, that one has a physical form to care for, even in the most basal of ways creates the primal ego-self archetype of I, even if levels of separateness are also determined by each individual… To care for one’s physical body one must associate with it. To care for ones community “one” must associate with it, and probably vice versa.

Consciousness exists already before self-consciousness is possible. The more the mind works, the more it filters out aspects of the endless stream of perception… the mind dissects and reassembles and the process of choice is, in my opinion, rooted in what so many people call the ego, but could just as well be called the self, or the personal avatar.

The self should not be seen as a problem in and of itself. Problems in development arise when the self has developed pathologies which are narcissistic in nature.

Once identified with the self (an almost unavoidable event in the multicellular consciousness which is the human being), frustration becomes practically unavoidable.

Repeatedly throughout the human experience, something will happen which is not within the control of the self.

Fear, impotence.

The weight of the world, the feeling that time is running out.

The great fear of not being “productive enough”.

I believe that frustration is the prime emotion of defeat. To me, frustration feels like a building up of potential energy, but I have come to believe that this is how it feels to contain an emotion over time. (no matter how short of a time).

This feeling we call frustration can be released in various ways.

Sadness, for example, is often accompanied with tears, which quite physically transport over abundant hormones out of the body.

Anger is another reaction fuelled by frustration, but one which is less focused on the release of the built up energy than on it’s reproduction.

Anger uses the potential energy of frustration to reproduce feelings of defeat.

Feeling destroyed, the self uses anger to destroy.

In some cases this is the physical destruction of objects or the violent manipulation of others, and the aetheric destruction which accompanies these events can have interruptive effects at corresponding locations throughout time-space (like “hauntings” or “curses”)

Rather than admit that (in this case) there were forces at play with more power than our own, we pretend to destroy the web of interconnectedness which has brought outside factors into our manifestations! Obviously “the fates” are not nearly as affected by us as we are by our own attempts of unconscious destruction.

Anger does not reverse the arrow of time in the way that one would want – changing the outcome of the situation which so frustrates us. Anger traps us in time loops because we recreate for ourselves the situations we cannot accept. But of course, each repeat is an opportunity to learn and do things differently…

Rather than admit defeat and move on, the narcissistic self is incapable of being “wrong”

Releasing the pent up energy of frustration as sadness would require admitting and eventually accepting that energies beyond our immediate control have had an influence on our attempted manifestation.

In order to hide the ego-crushing reality that they are not perfect or omnipotent, the self is capable of resorting to many different forms of self-delusion.

The illusion that the application of brute force after the fact will have any influence on a situation which has proved to be frustrating is fuel for the fires of anger.

Our conditioned violent responses act as a shield to defend the flimsy ego-self.

Frustration or sadness are not the only states pretend don’t exist when we get angry.

Jealousy would be another emotion which could indicate weakness to certain other-selves, and this weakness might be overcompensated for with a display of agression.

Anger can also be used to hide fear. What should naturally be viewed as an indicator that action should be taken to avoid injury or death, has become both a tool of mass hypnosis and something to be oppressed by the self trying to fake immortality.

Rather than be a healthy impulse, fear has become taboo to some. If fear can imply “weakness”, then it can be hidden behind the brute force of a violent reaction. A show of force to inflate the sense of self rather than to examine and cure true threats…

It is not uncommon for a narcissistic self to resort to violence.

Even if our personal egregories and thought forms can be given a certain life by the other conscious beings who remember or believe in them, this is only a fleeting sort of immortality, and not, in my opinion, the extension of the powers of will exerted after death.

The narcissistic self needs to believe itself to be infallible in order to hide from the reality of it’s existence being a construct of an organism which is fated to rot.

In order to be infallible, the tools of the innately imperfect ego self are manipulation through illusion and violence.

What is violence?

Many definitions of “violence” would point to not only physical force, but to aetheric powers as well, simply for being intense, and even if not intended to destroy.

For the purpose of this examination, I am going to define violence as

“trying to make others do what we want, usually against their own will, using brute force (or the threat thereof), whether aetheric or physical in expression”

This definition would exclude natural phenomena such as storms from this term. In my opinion violence is a human construct and is intrinsically linked to intention, rather than simply producing perceivably destructive results.

Violence is using the threat of destruction to motivate a self-preserving other-self to do what they otherwise had no motivation to do.

It is, of course, entirely possible that certain situations would require an act of brute force to protect a group or entity from violence.

It would be possible to respond to violence with brute force and claim peace of mind, or even social sanctuary in the name of justice.

An animal does not need to be angry in order to kill for food.

Applied aggression does not require anger.

When we define anger as an emotion we are justifying it as a compulsive behaviour.

And yet throughout almost all of the cultures I have been exposed to since my birth, violence is shunned as a socially unacceptable reaction.

By definition, an emotion is an innate part of the human experience. The words 0we use to describe things have a great power to cloud our perception.

Our failure to identify our states of being as separate from the experience of feeling causes, in my opinion, a lot of difficulty in expressing what we are actually feeling, as well as gives excuse to unconscious, compulsive behaviour.

But the spells of illusion we cast on one another with our ill-defined words can be broken through genuine feeling and self-reflection.

The very repulsion most people feel to the anger of others is a sign of it’s innate violent nature, but nothing has ever been truly healed by abstinence or prohibition… only perhaps ignored, or pushed off on another…

Until very recently, I felt that my anger was justified – that I was acting against injustice

For so long, I held on to my anger because I took it as a valid tool.

I believed that without anger, injustice would pass, unnoticed.

But what is justice?

Is it enough to feel that things have not gone according to my personal plan?

Can I really pretend that my personal agenda has to win out always?

Is that really justice, or entitlement?

Justice for whom in the end? As with most things, the root of the problem lays in the eye of the beholder…

A claim to nothing more than personal ambition would be rejected as unjust by anyone except an interested observer.

The archetype of justice, from my point of view, links to ideas of “balance” and “harmony”. Such things are not only subjective, but multifaceted, non-static, and ultimately dependant on more than one’s personal will.

If violence is taken to be linked to the intention of making another person or entity or force act against it’s personal will, how can we pretend that a violent act will result in harmony with the other forces involved?

Justice implies an understanding of cause and consequence in a way which violence does not.

Being trapped in an illusion means we believe the illusion and cannot see beyond it.

The power of belief keeps us locked in our self-affirming loops.

In order for the self to become aware of the unconscious causes of their actions, it must be able to admit impermanence and imperfection.

A healthy self-image must undergo a thousand deaths in order to accept the ever changing reality they interact with. These micro-deaths can be painful, and the narcissistic self will attempt to avoid one at all cost, even paying with it’s capacity for self-realisation, and ultimately, consciousness.

Clouded by the misguided belief of freedom of expression, I was not even aware of the violent nature of my outbursts of anger .

Even though subconsciously aware that a thing can break if you apply too much force to it, I seemed to be ignoring the idea that forcing the outcome of a situation would be to “break” the equation so to speak of this given situation, to which my energy was not the only contributing force.

I seemed to be ignoring even the idea that the intention of my anger was to change the outcome of a situation.

Knight of Wands, Reversed

I hid behind the idea that I was entitled to express my emotions.

The nature of a feeling is the perception of a state of being, and as such, can be perceived by all receptors open to these frequencies…

Even if anger were taken to be a feeling rather than a reaction, a feeling does not need to be expressed! A feeling is a perception of that state which must exist in order to be perceived. The existence of this state directly implies that it’s genesis does not require further action, and thus that any further action taken because of this feeling, is a reaction and not a feeling in itself.

The expression of the emotion must be done before it’s perception. Once we “feel” angry, the emotion has been expressed, and no further action need be taken.

Even though I was aware of the violent nature of a full-blown outburst, I thought that I was entitled to make noises of irritation, or to make noise when closing a door or putting something down. I felt that I had the right to let people know that I was angry, without admitting to myself that this need for attention was driven by a desire to manipulate others through a type of pity reaction to go out of their way to comfort me or to make me feel like the center of the universe my ego-self so desperately wants to be.

Anger has power

As babies most of us learn that making loud noises and throwing things is a powerful tool of attention seeking and manipulation, especially in face of care givers who have had their undesirable actions censored by their own care givers.

The repression of anger and the unwillingness to explore it’s roots because of social norms and illusions often creates individuals who are afraid of anger, or anything they associate with anger.

Most people will do anything to stop or destroy what they find to be uncomfortable.

Even give in to tyrannical demands in order to stop a temper tantrum.

The more we have been rewarded this type of behaviour, the more of an unconscious tool this becomes when faced with the impotence of frustration.

Considering the social taboo most cultures hold around violence, resorting to violence (even if it is aetheric in nature), is to admit that we have no other recourse, and yet for so many it is a first reaction.

Trained to anger

The reasons why someone would develop habits of reacting with anger could be vastly different from person to person.

From having their temper tantrums rewarded, to internalised gender roles, to fears, insecurities, copying their care givers, to having chosen to use violence as their preferred tool to get what they want.

Once the self has been rewarded for a certain behaviour, it will prefer to repeat this behaviour rather than try anything new because it is “safe”; that I to say, an attractive outcome is predicted.

Habits and “time loops” are not uncommon aspects of the human experience.

When anger has become a learned reaction (when we have grown “addicted” to the surge of energy which comes along from a successful outburst), it can be a steep learning curve to adopt new habits

I used to tell myself I had the right to get angry. That it was just me letting off steam and that other people could choose whether or not to be affected by this.

While it is true that we could all benefit from learning to act instead of react, I cannot hold anyone to a standard which I do not firstly live up to myself.

Anger draws on the energies of the “fight” reaction to a stressful situation.

Only the stressful situation is the mental stress associated with lack of acceptance.

The energies of frustration can be channeled in many different ways, and yet, for lack of examples and experience, we tend to repeat old habits and learned behaviour.

The natural reaction of “fight or flight” needs to be appeased in order to tun off the stress response.

Many times, anger builds to a grudge exactly because it does not really fulfil this natural impulse.

A shield and a sword both.

Not only does anger serve as a shield for our perceived weaknesses, the violence of it’s intention makes it an aetheric weapon of brute force energy manipulation.

The nature of anger is the manipulation of powers beyond personal control (powers which have been perceived as a threat in the pursuit of a personal desire), and it cares not if the result is to “destroy” or “break” the flow of those forces.

The self-entitled nature of anger is to reproduce the feelings of frustration and failure which the narcissistic self is so incapable of withstanding.

When we can not stand something, no matter how little we have tried to resist, we feel we have the right to destroy the source of our frustration

Or at the very least, to inflict the same frustration on it, in disregards of whether or not the frustration of our will was the intention of the other force in question.

Anger is the very subtlest of manifestations of this ego-centric delusion which so many of us share.

This self-entitled belief is based on the narcissistic idea that the self is the main player on the stage of reality, rather than a pinpoint expression of a single thread in a tapestry so vast that it is beyond the conceivability of the ego-mind.

The more aligned our personal goals are with the goals of the collective, the less resistance we should expect to encounter in the manifestation of our desires, but sometimes the collective-subconscious needs to be brought to light through resistance and struggle in order to be assimilated fully and with knowledge of the pros and cons.

It boils down to control

No doubt that the human mind has created the idea of control because of the fear of the perceived chaos of nature. Our powers of creation have lead us through the odds so far, so we grasp at this power to save us from the unknown.

Willpower is essential to the navigation of the self through this thing we call life.

But there is a great power in being humble in face of the forces beyond the self, even if it is the sort of humility with which one might look upon a friend or equal.

5 of Wands, Lust and Princess of Cups

Learning to feel frustration rather than act on it is a powerful tool for growing personal strength.

It may not be pleasant to feel the frustration rising and realise that there is no course of action available which will result in the outcome you desire.

It may not be desirable to find yourself in a situation where you have no control, but those situations are none the less inevitable.

Being able to withstand frustration and not react to it compulsively can be a powerful tool in the manifestation of what we desire.

There may be moments in which we still have the opportunity to act and to use the energy of our frustration to complete a difficult task. It is a powerful life skill to be able to identify these moments and to distinguish them from moments in which there is no course of action which will lead us to our most intimate goals. The quicker we are able to do this, the sooner we can begin a new course of action towards a different physical representation of what we want.

Our most primal desires are not expressed in the attraction to concrete things, but to certain feelings and conditions and states of being.

When the mind acts as interpreter between the aetheric and ego selves, the symbolism through which the aetheric is made tangible are often narrowing the channels through which manifestation of the primal desire is possible.

If we allow a frustrating situation to pass without giving it energy, there will be more energy available to invest in a new manifestation which connects to the same aetheric conditions.

No doubt the archetype of justice is linked to the idea that there are those who fight for it.

Fate is not handed to us, and we can not expect for things to go as we want without personal input.

The whispers of the world beyond my immediate perception are so far from my personal ideal that I cannot enjoy my chosen expression in this life without being an active force for the creation of the world of my dreams.

The idea of a self-preserving moral code from which stems the thought-form we know as justice is very curious to me.

I believe we create our own ideals of justice and we must learn to be the hand of those aetheric ideas and try our best to manifest the world of our dreams, because if we are passive in our expressions we are more than likely to be manipulated, and our powers of manifestation be unconsciously used to perpetuate the existing paradigm.

In no way do I want to advocate inactivity as a method for pursuing our goals.

All of this I have learned as a result of a process of expressing my anger, not repressing it.

The point I want to make is that there are sometimes more efficient forms of energy manipulation than the application of brute force…

I do not, however, believe in repression as an effective tool for self-improvement or personal development.

In my experience, one of the most important aspects of manifesting a desire is being able to let go once we have sent our wish out to the universe.

Acceptance that things are not within personal control at the moment does not always look the same.

Sadness can be a state which results from acceptance, but the energy built up in the form of frustration can also be used to work magick.

Just because this situation is being influenced by forces concerned with unknown goals does not mean that there does not exist another route for the manifestation of this particular desire.

Prince of Disks, Princess of Disks, and Lust

The frustration of a primal desire can be used to guide heart felt wishes through the aether, and can help to align with distance forces with similar goals.

On a physical level, when we want something, it is usually because we don’t have it, or have to spend energy regularly to maintain or produce it.

The reality of a desire is a need; a lack

Attraction implies separation.

If we can’t accept the lack of this thing, we are not in harmony with reality. Since our magickal powers stem from the present, we are cut off from the source of our power if we are out of sync with the reality of the moment we are living.

This is obviously not an on and off type thing (very few binary systems exist in nature, but the human mind seems to be fond of oversimplifications) but it can feel like it is.

I have lived a situation where I was building up lots of energy trying to manifest something and getting increasingly frustrated over why I could see this thing coming but it always seemed just out of reach…

One night I accepted whole heartedly that I was not entitled to get something just because I wanted it, and that my visions are not infallible.

That very same night, the energy I had been building up came cascading into the negative “space” I had created with my acceptance of my state of lack.

What do I really want?

Many times, getting angry will not advance us towards our goal, only be a waste of energy, leaving us drained to do the actual work.

By taking some time for self-reflection in the face of frustration, it is possible to direct the flow of energy to motivate action on a physical level, and to create attractions on an aetheric level.

Lust for Life

When we focus so intently on one situation that we are driven to frustration and anger, we seem to loose the lust for life which generates the very will with which we manifest our desires!

To be an empty vessel. To be curious about what is to come, rather than demanding.

When acceptance is the baseline, we are free to celebrate the fulfilment of desire, rather than taking it for granted.

Desire driven by passion can lead us down a million different roads, so why waste energy in the one which is blocked?

Water will wear away that obstacle even when fire will not.

Princess of Cups

“silently and effortlessly she goes about her work”

A feeling is a state, not an action, but those feelings can be used to guide us like a passive beacon through the khaos of life.

Being able to withstand frustrations means we can act to manifest our personal vibration with a full spectrum of options rather than in reaction to one specific situation.

How far can we expect one strand to warp the fabric?

To truly change it’s pattern we need to weave with many threads, so the weight of a desire should be measured by it’s influence from the collective sub conscious

There are some things we wish for in unison, whether we visualise it the same or not.

Concepts such as justice are possible because of our group mind.

Perhaps by tapping into the collective desires can we access shared energy (and fight shared obstacles)